Websites:

Biography:

I received my BA in Film Studies from Emerson College in Boston in 1989 and my PhD in Hebrew literature from Brandeis University in 2000. Before coming to Cambridge, I taught various courses on modern Hebrew literature and Israeli film at Princeton University and later at George Washington University, where I also directed the Hebrew language program for ten years, 2002-2012.

Subject groups/Research projects

Research Interests

My main interests are in modern Hebrew literary history, Israeli cinema and Israeli culture more generally, primarily the creation of a native Hebrew culture in Palestine/Eretz Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century and its legacy. I am interested in language history and development, literary traditions and modern culture writ large, especially in Israel and the Middle East. Most of my research and teaching is focused on these issues. I have written about Zionism and orientalism, about homoeroticism in modern Hebrew literature, about Hebrew literature and culture in the 1990s, the so-called postzionist age, and about various cultural constructs in Israeli cinema, among them gender formation, ethnic identities (Ashkenazi/Mizrahi) and religious identities.

I welcome inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to my academic profile as outlined above.

Other Professional Activities

Teaching

Most of the courses I teach relate to my research and include courses in the history of modern Hebrew literature since the late eighteenth century to the present. I also teach courses on the formation of Zionist culture that look at its construction in the first half of the twentieth century and its legacy beyond that time. MES5, MES13, MES36 and MES40 (PDF link MES 40)

External Affiliations

Journal of Modern Hebrew Studies, Co-editor

Prooftexts, Associate editor

Key Publications

Books

2016 Directed by God: Jewishness in Contemporary Israeli Film and Television, University of Texas Press.

2015 Brandeis Modern Hebrew, New England University Press (co-author).

Other Publications

“Secularity and its Discontents: Religiosity in Contemporary Israeli Film and TV”, Jewish Film & New Media: An International Journal 3, no. 1 (2015):3-24.

“Re-Orientalizing the Jew: Contemporary Israeli Masculinities”, Comparative Masculinity Studies: Commonalities and Differences in European Constructions of Masculinity from 1900 to the Present, Vienna: de Grueter Pulishing,2015, pp. 176-194.

"Making a Holy Community: God's Neighbors and the Ascendancy of a `new Religious Hegemony in Israel,” Jewish Film & New Media 1.1, 2013, pp. 64-86.

"Beaufort the Book, Beaufort the film: Israeli Militarism Under Attack." in Representations of War in Israeli Culture, An Anthology, Rachel S. Harris and Ranen Omer-Sherman editors, Wayne State University Press, 2011.

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